Cape York - Qld February 2013 - Toyota Land Cruiser Club of

MAKIN' TRACKS
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›1
Saturday 16th July 1983 … 8:18 am
I climbed into the driver’s seat of my 1977 FJ40, twisted the ignition
key to fire up the 4.2 litre, and eased her out into the Sydney morning
traffic. I was finally on my way to a place called Cape York. I had a full
62 litre tank of super which should easily get me to Newcastle in about
four hours time and behind me I had three months of planning and
dreaming of standing on ‘the Tip’.
I sit down to write this trip report 29 years after the event. The fading
memories are supported by a fuel log with no dates, my permit to visit
the Northern peninsula area valid for August 8-22 1983, and my small
collection of photos taken with my then 20 year old Minolta. Times and
dates are all approximate. What I wrote at the start above is just a good
guess. The only date I am sure of was when I travelled through Gunshot
Creek on the way north. I had scrawled my name and the date on the
sign there and then taken a picture of it.
Anyway, where did this start? I joined the TLCC in April 1983 as the
proud owner of an FJ40. I completed my driver training at Kenthurst
on April10, and I still have the card so that date is definite. Alex King
showed us how it was done and soon after I was in discussion with two
non-member workmates about a trip up to the Cape. One had an FJ40
soft top and the other a G60 SWB Nissan Patrol. We planned to drive
to the Tip and back in about six weeks and so set about getting our
vehicles and gear in order for the trip.
I had had my 40 Series for about two years, and with it just coming
up onto 100,000 km I had already replaced the rings myself as they
had ‘bound up’ around the pistons, which was apparently a common
problem with the 2F motor. My remaining budget allowed me to fit a
tinfoil bulbar, which was only good for holding the driving lights plus,
I opted for an Alpine stereo rather than replace the almost worn out
Dunlop Road Track Majors. Recovery gear wise I had a shovel, an axe,
a bush saw, a chain, and a genuine Tirfor winch that I had purchased
through the club. Extra fuel capacity was catered for with 3 x 20 litre
jerry cans carried right behind my driver’s seat. I didn’t smoke.
Bad news arrived a week before we were due to go. My travelling
companions had to cancel due to issues beyond their control. So what
was I to do? It was too late for anyone in the club to get ready in time
so here I was all ready to go on the trip of a lifetime, but alone? I went.
I travelled up the Pacific Highway and across the border as far as
Kingaroy, where I stayed for a few days with friends before heading
further north and then a day trip out to Great Keppel Island. A word
about money here. Back then there were no ATM’s. You carried your cash
on you and replenished it by taking your savings account book into the
bank and drawing out more as required. I carried a Letter of Credit with
me and also had my signature recorded in the back of the bank book
viewable under a black light. Interestingly we still use that black light
technology today. Anyway after Great Keppel Island, a combination of
not getting back from there until late on a Friday which then resulted in
me not being able to draw out more cash before the weekend, saw me
stuck in a road side rest area just north of Marlborough for three days
when my fuel got low. I read a lot of books and checked the oil quite a
few times while waiting for the local Post Office to open.
Monday morning, and with a pocket full of cash I headed north again.
I can’t recall much else of the trip up to Cairns, but once there I booked
into a caravan park, and over the next few days I set about making
sure everything was in order with the vehicle, supplies etc. I also
bought a second hand fridge which was to provide me with hours of
entertainment over the next three weeks as I resoldered every electrical
connection in it - some of them twice.
A word here about fuel consumption. The FJ40 was my first Japanese
vehicle after a string of Holden’s interspersed with one Jaguar (which
caught on fire). When I bought the 40 I thought “It’s Japanese, it won’t
use much fuel”. What an idiot I was! My big 62 litre tank would generally
get me 300 km on a good day, and if I drove on soft sand I sometimes
mistook the fuel gauge for the speedo as it was fluctuating so much!
I fitted a two barrel Holley carburettor which did improve matters
but reverted back to the original Toyota setup under pressure from
registration authorities. Hence my need to carry another 60 litres in the
cabin. Fuel prices at the time ranged from 38.9cpl around Brisbane to
56cpl at Coen. As it was, I never really had a need to use my jerry cans
as just about every settlement, commune, the odd caravan park, and
property gate had someone there only too willing to pump it out of a
44 and into your tank.
The Developmental Road up through the middle of the Cape in 1983
was rough. On the bright side, it was a dry dry-season and most of the
rivers were behaving themselves. At the Wenlock, you drove across the
riverbed, there was no namby-pamby bridge. That would have been
the deepest crossing of all barring the Jardine. One stream I crossed
had crystal clear water and a very deep and big drop-off to one side.
TLCC NEWS FEBRUARY 2013 41
MAKIN' TRACKS
Lying on its side under the water, and at the bottom of the drop-off, was
a brand new Suzuki Sierra SJ30. No-one was in it.
› The menu at Gunshot
On reaching the Jardine I stopped for a few hours and watched others
crossing, or they at least attempted to do so. The first-run success
rate was about 50%. I remember one 40 Series that had a Chevy V8
conversion, a bad clutch, and a dodgy gearbox sticking it into 2nd gear
and then powering their way across non-stop. I had heard somewhere
that there was a small vehicle ferry operating downstream, and after
watching the number of vehicles that were getting stuck I went looking
for it. I can’t remember his name, but he was a retired Police Sergeant
from Townsville and he operated a small vehicular punt that carried one
vehicle at a time for $25 one way. It was good value and so away I went.
I stood on the Tip the next day. It was quite a moment having travelled
about 4,500 km to get there and consumed about 50 trillion litres
of Shell’s, Caltex’s, Total’s, Golden Fleece’s, and Amoco’s finest. I was
camping at Red Island Point, which was nice enough, and doing
daytrips wherever I felt looked interesting. I saw the crashed DC3’s etc
at Jacky Jacky airfield, I visited several beaches and headlands, I crawled
over the wreck of the Chinese junk the ‘Pandora’, walked around the old
Somerset homestead, and I took a daytrip on the ferry over to Thursday
Island.
One morning I woke up and was ready to head off on another day trip,
only to find that my cranking battery was dead. I didn’t even attempt
to hook up my second battery as I didn’t have one. But I did have ‘THE
CRANK HANDLE’. Yes, FJ40’s came standard with a crank handle that was
inserted through a slot in the front bar and engaged into a notched
arrangement on the crankshaft pulley. I had practised many times down
in Sydney due to the sheer novelty of having a modern 1970’s vehicle
that actually had one, plus impressing all the ladies in the pub car park.
› Stuck at Gunshot
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MAKIN' TRACKS
› Three day camp north of Marlborough
› Crossing the Wenlock
After a very enjoyable week on the Tip, I finally turned the 40 south
and headed for home. Everything went well until I got to Gunshot. Back
then, Gunshot didn’t have much of a name for itself. It was a bit harder
heading south than north but there were harder creeks to deal with
at the time. I decided to fix that. On slowly exiting the steep southern
bank I became stuck. Over the course of the next hour I aired down and
tried several different lines, rather than pull out the Tirfor. I finally made
it out, helped by my friend Momentum. I stayed up on the bank for a
while as I cleared away the mud from underneath before changing a
back tyre that had picked up a deep nick in the sidewall. I noticed that
I had lost a rear mudflap in the Gunshot mud so I waded in and found
one. It wasn’t until I got back to Sydney that I saw that it was a slightly
different one to mine. I had found someone else’s. Just before I left
Gunshot another vehicle approached from the North towing a boat. He
got stuck as well so I pulled him out using his rope. Not many people
had snatch straps then.
› At Jacky Jacky airfield
I don’t think the latter worked. Anyway, I get out my crank handle and
I crank and I crank and I crank. I was getting really cranky as nothing
was happening! A fellow camper had seen what was happening and
brought over his dark blue Troopie to give me a jumpstart with my own
cables. On the road again, and I drove until lunch, by which time the
battery was charged and I had to fill my fuel tank.
My accommodation was a two-man Primus tent (made in Stockholm,
China didn’t exist). One stormy and windy night while camped at Red
Island point, I was inside my tent and reading a novel by the light of my
Primus gas light. I took many novels with me, about 60 I think. I read a
lot of them. So, on this dark and stormy night, wind howling outside,
and me as snug as a bug inside my tent, when all of a sudden the
tent falls down. Now gas lamps get very, very hot, and when my tent
collapsed onto my lamp, an absolutely perfectly round 15 cm hole was
burnt into the nylon roof of the tent. I had to live with that hole until I
got back to Sydney. No repair kits then.
And then there was the fishing! I had carried a 5 m rod all the way up
there on the roof. At the wharf at Red Island Point I would throw in my
lure and would never have to retrieve more then three or four times
before hooking up something big, usually a Barracuda. One evening I
saw the crew of the Thursday Island Ferry baiting up huge hooks with
chunks of wild pig and dropping them attached to lines over the stern
of the ferry with 44 gallon drums as floats. The next morning the drums
could be seen travelling very quickly from side to side behind the
moored ferry. When the crew hauled in the line you could see that they
had hooked up huge sharks, what type I don’t know, but I would classify
them as the ones you don’t want to be having a bath with!
I then moved camp to Putta Putta beach. I had a ball driving up and
down that beach after the week travelling up through The Cape and
being limited to about 50 km/h all the way. I could actually hit 80 on
this beach! I set up camp at the southern end of Putta Putta beach, and
after about 30 minutes I noticed that my green tent was crawling in
green ants! And I mean crawling in them! I left and went and camped
somewhere else.
Off again still heading south. Shortly after I started to notice a very
bad noise coming from the gearbox whenever I got it into 4th (top)
which wasn’t often, but soon every time I found 4th gear I was greeted
with this terrible, deep groaning noise. I still had about 600 km until
Cairns and then of course the run down to home and I was not looking
forward to doing it in 3rd gear. After an hour or so I finally worked out
what it was. I had brought along a guitar so that I might teach myself
how to play it during the trip. Never had the chance to even pick it up
let alone learn how to play it! Anyway, this guitar’s usual travelling spot
was in the passenger’s foot well with the neck of the guitar resting on
the fridge that sat on the passenger’s seat. We had many conversations
that fridge and I, usually about the amount of solder I had to feed it.
So, this guitar had slipped over such that the neck was resting near
the gearshift in such a fashion that whenever I selected 4th gear, the
gear lever was pressed hard up against the neck of the guitar and the
vibrations were transmitted into the guitar and so the terrible rumbling
sound. I laughed for about three hours.
I had always intended to return to Cairns via the CREB track, and so
having overnighted at Helenvale I headed south wearing my brand
new Lions Den Hotel t-shirt. I still have it today but it is quite faded and
has shrunk several sizes! I approached the CREB track fully expecting
that I would need to backtrack via the Mulligan Highway. The CREB had
a reputation for being extremely steep, wet, and difficult, and here I was
with worn tyres, a Tirfor, and a kick-arse sound system. I was fortunate.
It was quite dry, and so several hours later with almost no drama at all, I
emerged at the Daintree and so toured on down to Cairns
On arrival back in Cairns I sold the fridge back to the dealer I had bought
it off. It still worked but must have been a few pounds heavier with all
the solder I had put into it to close all the open circuits that it picked up
from the corrugations.
The run down to Sydney was pretty straightforward. I stopped for a few
days at Bribie Island to see some more friends and arrived home near the
end of August. I had travelled 9745 km with an average consumption of
20.14 l/100. The only mechanical troubles were a nicked sidewall, a lost
mudflap, and a fridge that wouldn’t stop stopping.
It took me 29 years to get this trip report together and I sure hope the
Sergeant-at-Arms doesn’t fine me over it!
I must go back there someday.
Martin Dalmazzo
Sergeant-at-Arms
TLCC NEWS FEBRUARY 2013 43